I Don't Want the Bottle
Title: I Don’t Want The Bottle
Verse: Further Interruptions
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Summary: It was far too tempting an offer for someone as broken as Roy.
Author’s Note: So sorry to anyone that signed up to read cute family/kid fic. Their backstory has apparently decided to be told now and it’s not really pretty. Don’t worry. I’ll get back to cute kids and doting husbands soon enough! Huge thanks to kzellr for the beta!
It didn’t happen immediately, but that night changed everything. Roy wasn’t sure how even. It just changed.
He didn’t know why Ed had crashed into his life but after a two-day hangover Roy had to admit that he was lucky Fullmetal had arrived when he did. He’d been too sick the next morning to be grateful when he’d woken in the arms of his subordinate and he didn’t remember much past Fullmetal’s dramatic entrance.
It wasn’t until Sunday when he found the bottle of whiskey hidden among his pots and pans that he realized just how lucky he was.
He’d stopped on the way home to buy that particular brand of whiskey, so he knew it had started as a full bottle. There hadn’t been enough of it left to share by the time Fullmetal had taken it from him.
Even luckier than his appearance had been the way Fullmetal had left. He never mentioned it. When Roy called him into his office a couple days later to say thank you, he’d passed it off as nothing, except to tell Roy to call if he wanted something besides a bottle next time.
It was far too tempting an offer for someone as broken as Roy.
The first time he’d had nightmares after that, he’d sat in bed half the night before his treacherous hand had picked up the phone to call Ed. A few words over the line were all he’d needed to feel more grounded in the present and he had been able to get back to sleep.
Ed, of all things, thanked him the next day for reaching out.
He began to notice it then. The way Ed watched him. It had been years since he’d been used to this amount of scrutiny from an Elric. As much as Roy wanted to understand it, he couldn’t and it was driving him a little mad.
He’d seen people watch him with interest. He’d see the way their minds worked, whether they were trying to figure him out for political means or personal. Whatever Fullmetal wanted was personal, he knew that, but this wasn’t the lust filled eyes of a man looking for a partner, or the calculation of a perceived threat. Ed looked at him with care and compassion, but there was too much beyond that to understand.
For someone who was used to understanding what other people wanted from him before they realized it themselves, it was infuriating.
Well, that was the definition of his relationship with Fullmetal, wasn’t it?
And now, Roy stared down the front of the hallway and then looked back the other way. He had two choices tonight and he knew that. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back to rest against the wall. Stuck in his own head, in his home, in his goddamned hallway. Stuck without a clue of which way to turn.
Because remembrance was hard and Roy had never learned how to do it gracefully.
To the left, was the bottle. Just a few steps into the kitchen and he would find his solace as he had for years.
To the right, was something he didn’t deserve. Something surprisingly less harsh and more understanding.
He didn’t deserve it, but he ached for just a little compassion tonight, a few kind words. His feet took him to the right and he picked up the phone.
It rang twice before a voice on the other end of the line picked up. Roy froze, not sure what to say. The voice on the other end sounded annoyed, but then it happened.
“Roy?”
“Fullmetal.”
There was an intake of breath on the other side of the phone, as if Roy had surprised him. He didn’t know why it would. Roy was weak. Three times now he’d called Ed in the middle of the night. Did it matter that he’d gotten smarter this time and called before the drink could send him into hellish dreams?
It broke the tension in his chest, the sound of the other man across the phone line, and he felt like he could breathe again. “You said,” he took a deeper breath and tried again.
“Ed, I don’t want the bottle.”